The Oceanic Languages form a closed subgroup within one of the world 's largest language families, Austronesian. There are between 1000 and 1500 Austronesian languages (estimates vary), with so much structural diversity that they are best handled in two volumes, one on the Oceanic and one on the non-Oceanic Austronesian languages. This division is clear and the grammar sketches in this volume provide a cross-section through the structural diversity of the Oceanic languages which is not available elsewhere. Much of the material is drawn from data collected by the authors and has not been previously published.

The volume contains five background chapters: The Oceanic Languages, Sociolinguistic Background, Typological Overview, Proto-Oceanic and Internal Subgrouping. In addition, the volume presents forty-three grammar sketches, selected from the five hundred Oceanic languages spread across a region embracing eastern Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia.

Serial verbs are a recently recognized construction in which a string of verbs or verb-like items is used to convey a single meaning within one clause, for example, 'go get your hair cut'. Though the construction is rare in English, it is common in many languages. This book shows what serial verbs are, where they are found (particularly in the Oceanic languages of the Pacific), and how current theory accounts for them. The author argues that their formation is a consequence of contact between different languages.

Bislama is the variety of Melanesian Pidgin spoken in Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides). In this book Terry Crowley describes its history and development from the 1840s to the present. In the first chapters the labour history of Vanuatu is reviewed in detail in order to establish what were the contacts between speakers of various languages with one another over the period. The written record is thoroughly examined for evidence about how people communicated in the early contact period and how the contact language developed over time. In his discussion of the sources of lexical items the author relates the introduction of various categories of words as much as possible to specific kinds of social contact. In the later chapters he gives a detailed treatment of selected grammatical constructions and their evolution, including syntactic developments that are currently in progress. In this discussion he addresses the controverial issue of the source of grammatical constructions in Bislama, considering in particular the possible role of substratum structural patterns. He concludes that while there is good evidence for substratum influence in the grammer of Bislama, the mere existence of str

Crowley's voice of experience brings us the best practical fieldwork guide to date. Sensible, frank, and comprehensive, this book prepares beginning field workers for the rigours ahead and will save years of costly trial and error. N. J. Enfield
This book is a comprehensive, practical guide to field linguistics. It deals in particular with the problems arising from the documentation of endangered languages. Deploying a mixture of methodology and practical advice and drawing on his own immense experience, Terry Crowley shows how to record, analyse, and describe a language in the field. He covers the challenges and problems the researcher is likely to encounter, offers guidance on issues ranging from ethics to everyday diplomacy, and provides full discussions of corpus elicitation, how to keep track of data, salvage fieldwork, dealing with unexpected circumstances, and many other central topics. "We all learn by our mistakes," he writes, "and I have plenty of my own to share with you."

Crowley's voice of experience brings us the best practical fieldwork guide to date. Sensible, frank, and comprehensive, this book prepares beginning field workers for the rigours ahead and will save years of costly trial and error. N. J. Enfield This book is a comprehensive, practical guide to field linguistics. It deals in particular with the problems arising from the documentation of endangered languages. Deploying a mixture of methodology and practical advice and drawing on his own immense experience, Terry Crowley shows how to record, analyse, and describe a language in the field. He covers the challenges and problems the researcher is likely to encounter, offers guidance on issues ranging from ethics to everyday diplomacy, and provides full discussions of corpus elicitation, how to keep track of data, salvage fieldwork, dealing with unexpected circumstances, and many other central topics. "We all learn by our mistakes," he writes, "and I have plenty of my own to share with you."

All languages change, just as other aspects of human society are constantly changing. This book is an introduction to the concepts and techniques of diachronic linguistics, the study of language change over time. It covers all themajor areas of historical linguistics, presenting concepts in a clear and concise way. Examples are given from a wide range of languages, with special emphasis on the languages of Australia and the Pacific. While the needs of undergraduate students of linguistics have been kept firmly in mind, the book will also be of interest to the general reader seeking to understand langauge and language change.
For this fourth edition, a number of new sections have been written, including many new problems and several datasets. Existing materials have been supplemented with new sections on grammaticalization, tonogenesis, morphological change, and using statistical methods in language classification.

Bislama is the national language of Vanuatu, the world's most linguistically diverse nation with at least 80 actively spoken Oceanic languages used by about 200,000 people. Bislama began as a plantation pidgin based on English in the nineteenth century, but it has since developed into a unique language with a grammar and vocabulary very different from English. It is one of very few national languages for which there is no readily available reference grammar. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive account of the grammar of Bislama as it is used by ordinary Ni-Vanuatu. It does not, therefore, aim to describe any kind of artificial written norm but sets out to capture a range of different kinds of ways that Ni-Vanuatu will say things in various contexts, both written and spoken, formal and informal. The thrust of this volume is to show that Bislama has a grammar - an unfamiliar concept for those educated in Vanuatu. It also shows that Bislama is a language of considerable complexity, which will come as a surprise to many of its users, who have been taught to view their language as somehow ""simple"" and even ""deficient.

Oscar Skelton (1878-1941) was a prominent early twentieth-century scholar who became a civil servant and political advisor to prime ministers Mackenzie King and R.B. Bennett. He wrote a number of important books and one, Socialism: A Critical Analysis, was highly praised by Vladimir Lenin. His wife, Isabel Skelton (1877-1956), wrote extensively about literature and history; she was the first historian to treat women from the country's past individually in their own right rather than as a generalized category. Both husband and wife promoted the idea that Canada was an independent nation that no longer needed Britain's tutelage. Terry Crowley has written a unique double biography that examines the lives of Isabel and Oscar, their works, and their careers. He shows how both individuals in their own way influenced the development of Canada as a nation state. Crowley questions why, when both Isabel and Oscar wrote influential works, Oscar's career blossomed, while Isabel remains virtually unrecognized. He concludes that despite Isabel's literary accomplishments, her life remained enmeshed in domestic and family roles, while Oscar's rise to prominence was facilitated by male scholarly and publishing networks as well as the support that women provided to men's careers. This book traces the lives of two people who rejected British colonialism and hailed a new nation on the world's stage, examining the intersections of gender, nationality, and literary expression at a significant juncture in Canada's history.

Oscar Skelton (1878-1941) was a prominent early twentieth-century scholar who became a civil servant and political advisor to prime ministers Mackenzie King and R.B. Bennett. He wrote a number of important books and one, Socialism: A Critical Analysis, was highly praised by Vladimir Lenin. His wife, Isabel Skelton (1877-1956), wrote extensively about literature and history; she was the first historian to treat women from the country's past individually in their own right rather than as a generalized category. Both husband and wife promoted the idea that Canada was an independent nation that no longer needed Britain's tutelage. Terry Crowley has written a unique double biography that examines the lives of Isabel and Oscar, their works, and their careers. He shows how both individuals in their own way influenced the development of Canada as a nation state. Crowley questions why, when both Isabel and Oscar wrote influential works, Oscar's career blossomed, while Isabel remains virtually unrecognized. He concludes that despite Isabel's literary accomplishments, her life remained enmeshed in domestic and family roles, while Oscar's rise to prominence was facilitated by male scholarly and publishing networks as well as the support that women provided to men's careers. This book traces the lives of two people who rejected British colonialism and hailed a new nation on the world's stage, examining the intersections of gender, nationality, and literary expression at a significant juncture in Canada's history.